Brief Answer: Latanoprost can rarely cause muscle pains. Detailed Answer: Hello Welcome to Health care magic Iam Dr. Dadapeer K, an ophthalmologist and I answer health problems related to eye. It seems from the history that you are a elderly female aged about 66 years on treatment for glaucoma with latanoprost eye drops. Following the use of latanoprost eye drops you developed body and joint pain. Your doctor has suspected polymyalgia rheumatica and started prednisolone. Polymyalgia rheumatica (PMR) is a common clinical disease seen in elderly individuals and it responds to treatment with small dose steroids like prednisolone. Since your erythrocyte sedimentation is rate is only 3 you need to reconsider this diagnosis as usually in polymyalgia rheumatica sedimentation rate will be increased. Though PMR is self limiting disease a few can develop giant cell arteritis, hence the diagnosis needs to be confirmed by further blood tests like C- reactive protein, which will be increased. If the diagnosis is confirmed you need to continue low dose steroid treatment. The other thing need to be ruled out is side effect of latanoprost. Latanoprost can very rarely lead to muscle pains. Simbrinza is not known to have this side effect, hence you can replace the latanoprost by simbrinza if in doubt of latanoprost being responsible for muscle pains. Hence I conclude by saying first thing to be done is confirmation of diagnosis of PMR by blood tests like C-reactive protein, if the diagnosis is confirmed continue using latanoprost eye drops. If the diagnosis of PMR is not confirmed it can be a side effect of Latanoprost and you can replace it by a alternative antiglaucoma drug. Do discuss these things with your doctor and you can discontinue latanoprost and replace it by other antiglaucoma drugs like simbrinza or timolol depending on the severity of the glaucoma. Hope I have answered your questions and the information is helpful to you. Thank you

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Brief Answer: Rarely these drugs can cause muscle pains. Detailed Answer: Hello Thank you for the follow up I mentioned elderly only on the basis of age, it is good that your physiological age which is more important is very much lesser and you are involved in lot of physical exercises and physical training. PMR is considered as a differential diagnosis in only elderly people hence I used it. As you have mentioned antiglaucoma drugs like latanoprost and Simbrinza can cause muscluar pain and the incidence is more common with latanoprost as I had mentioned in the previous answer. But these side effects are very rare in clinical practice. I have not stopped these drugs till now for my patients because of this side effect. Hence this is very rare side effect. PMR is most likely in your case but the fact against this is erythrocyte sedimentation rate of 3 and the fact favouring diagnosis is response to treatment with steroids. Hence I can advice you to get few more sensitive tests like C reactive protein which can confirm the diagnosis of PMR. If PMR is ruled out then it can be because of side effect of drugs like latanoprost... Hence I will first try to rule out PMR before suspecting muscle pain as a side effect of the drugs. As you want to know that whether the drugs can cause muscle pain as a side effect or not? My answer is yes they can cause muscle pains as side effect but this is very rare and rarely found in clinical practice. Hope I have answered your question and the information is helpful to you. Thank you

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